Report blasts Stevens prosecutors

Federal prosecutors knowingly concealed exculpatory evidence and allowed false testimony to be presented at trial in their overzealous pursuit of criminal charges against the late Sen. Ted Stevens, a scathing new report by a special investigator finds.

Stevens was charged in July 2008 and later convicted on seven counts of failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper gifts. The longest serving Senate Republican in U.S. history, he lost his reelection that November, ending a legendary political career that had begun before Alaska was even a state.

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But Attorney General Eric Holder moved to have the verdict aside in 2009 after finding widespread problems in the prosecutors’ handling of the case, including allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by an FBI agent who worked with the Justice Department’s team.

After that stunning development, a special investigator, Henry Schuelke, was appointed by the court to review the case. Schuelke is a well-known former DOJ lawyer with an extensive history as a criminal defense attorney.

On Thursday, nearly three years after the conviction was vacated and after Stevens’ death in a plane crash in 2010, Schuelke’s 500-plus page report laid out in exhaustive detail a narrative of legal bungling and prosecutorial missteps.

None of the prosecutors has been charged with wrongdoing, yet the fallout from the Stevens’ case continues to be felt at the Justice Department and within the Public Integrity Section, the special unit that oversees corruption cases against lawmakers and government officials, as well as on Capitol Hill and back in Alaska. Several of the prosecutors in the case tried to delay the release of the Schuelke report, although U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan — who presided over the Stevens’ trial — and a federal appeals court rejected that request.

“The investigation and prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated Senator Stevens’s defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness,” Schuelke wrote in the summary of his report.

It came after more than two years of review, including interviews of all the members of the elite DOJ team handling the case, all of whom worked for the Public Integrity Section. That unit oversees corruption cases involving lawmakers and public officials.

Brendan Sullivan, Stevens’ lead defense attorney, blasted DOJ after the release of the Schuelke report.

“A miscarriage of justice would have been averted had the government complied with the law. There would have been no illegal verdict. The Senator would not have lost the election in Alaska,” Sullivan said. “Instead, the government proceeded by any means necessary to win their case. In the process, the government violated the United States Constitution and the ethical rules of the legal profession.”